Israel Widens Offensive

MIDEAST CRISIS

Troops In Control Of Nearly All Major West Bank Cities

Tense Standoff At Bethlehem Church Enters 2nd Day

April 4, 2002|By Tracy Wilkinson, Foreign Correspondent

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israel controlled almost every major Palestinian city in the West Bank on Thursday after soldiers and armored vehicles shot their way into Nablus, a seething militant stronghold.

Twelve Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed Wednesday in operations across the West Bank.

A day after one of Christianity's holiest sites became a battlefield, hundreds of tanks rolled into Nablus and were headed toward the volatile Balata refugee camp, where heavy shooting was reported, witnesses said.

In Bethlehem, a standoff between the Israeli army and about 100 Palestinian gunmen holed up inside the Church of the Nativity continued into a second day. Negotiations were under way to stave off a blood bath on the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born, the army said. Paratroopers were fanning out through the narrow streets of Bethlehem.

The standoff has created a dilemma for the Israeli army. The military desperately wants to capture the gunmen while maintaining its vow "not to shoot at sacred places" and avoiding an assault on a shrine full of priests and nuns.

"We do not want to actively invade in a military way," said Brig. General Ron Kitrey, the Israeli Army's chief spokesman. "But we definitely want to search the church, with the kind assistance of the people who are in charge there."

Reached by telephone inside the church, a Greek Orthodox priest who is tending to the gunmen said he is duty-bound to help those who seek sanctuary.

The move on Nablus was the latest in Israel's takeover of towns and cities across the West Bank in a widespread offensive that the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says is designed to stop a wave of suicide bombers.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested, dozens killed and huge amounts of property destroyed in the operation. But Israeli officials say they haven't captured any top-level militants, and suicide bombings have continued unabated.

As Israel presses ahead with its campaign in the West Bank, the move into Nablus is especially risky. It is the Palestinians' largest West Bank city, with more than 180,000 people, and its cramped, labyrinthine old city, known as the casbah, has always been synonymous in the Israeli lexicon with nightmarish urban warfare.

Palestinian fighters were congregated Wednesday in the casbah, where they were planting sandbags and planning resistance.

Several of the suicide attacks were launched from the Nablus area.

Also Wednesday, Israeli troops backed by helicopter gunships fought their way into the West Bank city of Jenin and the town of Salfit. A female nurse, a 13-year-old boy, a male civilian and three Palestinian gunmen, along with an Israeli soldier, were killed in that operation, security officials on both sides said.

Alarmed at the escalating war, the European Union decided to send a delegation to the region, but without assurances that it would even be allowed to meet Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, who remains captive in his Ramallah headquarters.

"This is now the most dangerous conflict in the world," Peter Hain, Britain's minister for Europe, said at a rare emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

Sharon convened Cabinet ministers to approve the next stage of the open-ended "Operation Protective Wall."

The Palestinian Authority issued a statement calling on Palestinians to resist.

"The Palestinian leadership urges our people to close ranks in a long-term struggle against this occupation and to mobilize all its resources to confront this unjust and criminal war," the statement said.

Under the landmark 1993 Oslo peace accords, eight West Bank cities were handed to the Palestinian Authority. Only two of them, Hebron and Jericho, were still under Palestinian control today.

In the others -- Nablus, Ramallah, Kalkilya, Jenin, Tulkarm and Bethlehem -- tanks patrolled streets and confined hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to their homes. In Ramallah, residents were without water after city officials said Israeli troops destroyed the main pumping station when shelling a Palestinian security compound.

In what some Israelis fear will be another front in the war, Israeli fighter jets pounded suspected guerrilla hide-outs in southern Lebanon after Israeli army outposts were repeatedly attacked in a disputed border area, security officials and witnesses said.

Israel's defense minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, summoned the security Cabinet to a meeting at 11 p.m. The outcome was not immediately known, but the attacks have raised the possibility of an Israeli retaliation against Syrian targets, on the premise that Hezbollah, the militant Islamic movement in Lebanon, would not attack Israel without consent from Damascus.